A Gulf Business report said Mohamed Mursi, the deposed Egyptian president, appeared in a local court on Sunday over allegations that he had conspired with foreign groups that caused terrorist acts at home. Citing an earlier article by Reuters, the charges against Mursi were the Egyptian government's attempts to crack down against Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic political faction recognized also in UK as a terrorist group.
In the court hearing, prosecutors claimed that Mursi's case was the biggest in the history of Egypt, detailing the former president's plans as far back as 2005, said the report. Mursi also implicated several groups in the "terrorist plan," namely Palestinian group Hamas, Shi'ite Islamist government of Iran and Hezbollah, his Lebanese ally.
The report noted that Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood helped him win the presidential seat in 2012, but was since driven underground after the army took over in July following massive protests against his ruling. Gulf Business said the events following the takeover of the group had led Egypt sanctioning the death of a thousand of its members, incarceration of thousands of other members, which also include the Brotherhood's top leaders.
Mursi is reportedly standing on trial in three cases and had been charged with two others, with the latest charge with Brotherhood leaders Mohamed Badie, Khairat El-Shater, Mahmoud Ezzat and others over acts of terrorism in Egypt and sharing private military information to a foreign state.
In the trial, one prosecutor said that the plan of the Brotherhood at that time was to send some of its soldiers to the the Gaza Strip to get trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Hezbollah, and is looking to join forces with Sinai Peninsula-based extremists, ultimately setting the rest into motion for the group to create a new Islamic emirate under its control.
The group countered and accused the government army of reviving a dictatorship, of which the latter denied, said the Gulf Business report.
